Nicole Kidman reckons that she was cast in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut because of her “provocative nature”.
The 1999 psychological drama was Kubrick’s last film, coming to the silver screen just a few months after his death. Starring Kidman opposite her then-husband Tom Cruise, the film told the story of the fallout of Kidman’s character Alice revealing to her husband (Cruise) that she had contemplated having an affair the year before.
The film has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and Kidman reflected upon making it for The LA Times. When asked what she brought to the character, she said: “My boldness. I’m quite up-front and Alice becomes quite up-front, particularly when she was stoned … although that wasn’t me when I was stoned. I was just naturally like that. Up-front.”
Kubrick encouraged Kidman to retain that sense of boldness. “The great thing about him is that he told us, ‘Don’t put me on a pedestal.’ That’s the No. 1 rule,” she continued. “Because when we came to his house, we were like, ‘Oh, my God. The great Stanley Kubrick.’ And that kind of thinking hinders the creative process. He didn’t want sycophants. He told us to throw ideas out. And everyone has to wait at least 10 seconds before they say no to an idea. I heard that, and I’m in my 20s, and I’m like, ‘OK. It’s on.’ It was experimental, like making student films in Australia.
“I suppose that was why he cast me,” she added. “That mischief, that provocative nature, he found that out and it got more imbued into Alice. The scene where I drop the dress … that was me. That wasn’t written. That was my dress from my closet. ‘This is how I take off the dress, Stanley.’ Because I had a lot of clothes, we weren’t paying to buy clothes. And Stanley had come over and I was showing him all these beautiful dresses. That’s how that happened.”
In the same interview, Kidman revealed how her daughter Sunday reacted to the scene in the film where she “gets stoned”.
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“She said, ‘Mom, that was good.’ And then they showed that scene in Birth,” Kidman went on, noting another film from 2004 that she appeared in. “And she said, ‘That was really good.’ And I watched that scene and thought, ‘Wow. That was really good.’ And I never do that.”